5 ms·

I would like to hear more about why you think there is causation between those two things, rather than just correlation.

• deltasevennine 4y ago
  You're saying evolution did not cause bias? That it's just a correlation? The fact that all people across the world across all cultures and demographics display typical human biases that follow extremely identical patterns is a correlation? Maybe. This is an not a testable experiment. Every physical and mental aspect of your being is "caused" by your genetics which is again "caused" by natural selection... that is, in fact the theory of natural selection. To deny causation is to deny the theory of natural selection. (this is a tangent, but some would argue that environment influences the mental aspect of your being... this is true but again, your genes build your brain and ultimately controls how your brain reacts to the environment... you are still ultimately a product of your genes) I believe in natural selection, hence I believe that evolution "caused" bias to evolve in humans. That is why I think this. Does that answer your question?
  • blep_ 4y ago
    Natural selection produces good enough results. It does not necessarily produce optimal results. If there is no evolutionary pressure either for or against biases, what you get is essentially random chance. That's the null hypothesis: "we just happened to wind up with biases, because evolutionary pressure didn't care either way". I am asking you to explain what sorts of evolutionary pressure might select for these biases, because I'm not seeing it. Furthermore, I would like to know whether that still applies - if it was only useful to avoid being eaten by lions, great, but then dropping it now that we don't regularly confront lions isn't meaningfully "bad for you".
    • deltasevennine 4y ago
      > Natural selection produces good enough results. It does not necessarily produce optimal results. Sure but we don't even know what an optimal result is. And many of the solutions evolution has come up with we can't even reproduce. So in a sense evolution, though not maximally optimal, in many cases is far MORE optimal then anything we can come up with and thus for all intents and purposes evolution can be quite optimal relative to any solution we can cook up. There's nothing logically preventing human biases from being part of this optimal group given that we aren't completely sure why these biases exist. >If there is no evolutionary pressure either for or against biases, what you get is essentially random chance. That's the null hypothesis: "we just happened to wind up with biases, because evolutionary pressure didn't care either way". Don't try to pretend to do science here. Unless an actual experiment is run, we're going to use logical assumptions to figure things out rather then scientific testing. Anyway logically speaking your "null hypothesis" has a flaw. Random mutations don't coalesce into an identical features across all humans. Individual humans will acquire different random mutations. That's what random means. If all humans acquired the same mutation it wouldn't be random anymore. So something like different heights is something that there's not that much selection pressure for, so there's variability in height. Not all humans are the same height. However, something without variability that is identical across all races, according to the theory of natural selection... means that there is selection pressure. For bias, there are certain biases that are literally identical across all races. This is very different from varying heights. The IKEA effect is one example of an identical bias. The fact that, this bias is identical across most people shows that SOMETHING is selecting for it. I'll caveat with some detail here... There is a secondary outcome in evolution when there is no selection pressure. With enough breeding the random mutations can coalesce into a singular feature but this feature is not what you think. You see this with blind fish who live in caves. Over time those fish lose their eyes. This is because they don't use their eyes so eventually random mutations that render them blind accumulate to the point that the fish don't have eyes anymore. But these random mutations accumulate into a lack of a feature... not a random identical feature on all fish. If you see that all cave fish are growing wings out of their eye sockets, it's not because of lack of selection pressure... something had to have made it happen. This is what we see with biases. Many biases are not only identical, but very a very specific feature set. >if it was only useful to avoid being eaten by lions, great, but then dropping it now that we don't regularly confront lions isn't meaningfully "bad for you". How is the ikea effect only meaningful for avoiding getting eaten by lions? You're probably talking about fear. This theory of lions applies to fear and is about how certain phobias are no longer applicable to the modern world. But how does this apply to the ikea effect? If you think all bias has no relevance in the modern world then that in itself is biased thinking. There's no evidence for this. In fact it's quite unlikely. Maybe some biases are no longer relevant, but certainly it's not clear whether the Ikea effect is some vestigial feature that no longer applies. There are tons of biases that, in fact, still help you survive. >because I'm not seeing it. Now do you see? Because if you don't... that might be a sort of stubborn bias talking. Maybe you're not trying to understand me here. Maybe you're trying to make me understand your point and vice versa. Maybe it's rare for people to ask a genuine question on HN...and everyone's just so biased that they're actually just trying to mouth off their own ideas, and that's likely what we're both doing.